Sermon of His Eminence, Bishop Parthenius of Antania and Abbot of the Bigorski Monastery, delivered during the Vespers of the feast of St. John the Forerunner, on Friday, 10 September 2021 AD
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!
Honourable fathers, Venerable brothers monks and nun sisters, Pious Christians We thank the Lord for granting us that this year, too, His glorious Prophet, The Forerunner and Baptist, St. John, gather us in this ten-century-old sanctuary, to venerate his miraculous icon and his most holy relics. We are gathered to pray for the gift of grace and peace, both for our souls and for the world in which we live. The words which St. John prepared the people with, and which announced in the Jordan desert the coming of the Messiah are equally important and relevant today. He travelled around Jordan, says the Gospel, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins; As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth; And all flesh shall see the salvation of God. (Luke 3,4-6) Let us pay more attention to the words: let every mountain and every hill be lowered. What could this refer to? Certainly not the physical mountains that surround us, but rather the mountains made of pride in our hearts. The voice of the one who cries out in the wilderness today invites us all with the same force to take down the mountains of egoism and the hills of vanity and pride, and that means to humble ourselves before the Lord God, so that He, the Word of God, may move in and live with us.
Those who humbly accepted the call of St. John and tried to flatten the mountains of sinful selfishness were worthy to recognize and receive the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. (John 1,29). The mountains and hills in the heart, created by pride, make a person unfeeling, selfish, lonely, sad. That is why pride is called the mother of all sins and all evils. In fact, because of pride, the first fall occurred, when our forefathers in the Garden of Eden manifested pride before their Heavenly Father and thus, they were the first to build the wall between man and his Creator. How many mountains and hills of human pride have stood as an impenetrable barrier between God and man! However, the impossible for men is possible for God: out of too much love for His creation, the Son of God came to Earth to deliver man from the misery into which he himself had fallen. After the willing sacrifice of the God-man Christ, Whom the ascetic hand of St. John, the last Old Testament prophet, revealed to all of us as the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world, all men are given the opportunity of salvation and deification. But it takes asceticism on our side, repentance and feat to gain humility, similar to the one of the Baptist. Then the gentle Christ will fill the valleys of our humility with the grace of the Holy Spirit. St. John, therefore, calls us to humility, to humble ourselves in our hearts and souls, so that we can receive communion and be united with Christ God.
The life of St. John is a great miracle from his very birth. But what captivates and astonishes us most is his miraculous humility. Namely, the humility made him a friend of the Lord, a friend of the Savior Christ, Who expressed the greatest praise for him: Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. (Matthew 11:11). The whole life of St. John was a sign of great humility. After all, everything he did, all his struggle, his entire life-long feat was for the sake of Christ. We are deeply moved by his words about the appearance of the Savior in the world: He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice: this my joy, therefore, is fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease. (John 3: 29-30) Who is He? Christ, the Bridegroom of the Church, before Whom St. John was sent, to proclaim Him and to reveal Him to us. That is why he said to them: I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire (Matthew 3:11). That is, with life-giving grace, with the uncreated energies of God, through which we are sanctified and united with God.
Saint John conveyed in his humbleness even his disciples to Christ, without any objection, without the slightest possessiveness. In the Gospel, we read how John’s disciples, Andrew the First-Called and John, doubted at first that Jesus of Nazareth was the true Messiah because he looked very different from their teacher. St. John encouraged them to go with Christ, but they were filled with suspicion. Therefore, the Baptist, knowing their thoughts, sent the disciples to Christ to ask Him if he was the Savior who should come to Earth, or if they should wait for someone else. Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. (Matthew 11: 4-5). By this, in fact, the disciples of St. John were convinced that the Lord Jesus was the promised and long-awaited Messiah, so they obeyed their teacher and joined Christ, the Bridegroom of the Church.
The full sermon is at the following link
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